Monday, October 02, 2006

An open letter to the germ-a-phobs who work in my office building

I’ve been meaning to write this letter for a while now, but today’s ridiculous events have convinced me that it’s high-time we’ve had a talk, ladies. This event, of course, is when apparently a code-blue alert was issued upon our ladies room running out of paper toilet seat covers.

I mean, you called the janitor?

You. Called. The. Janitor.

Um, yes, is this the emergency janitorial central headquarters? Yes, I need to report that a restroom on the sixth floor of the coldest office building in the metro DC area has run out of paper toilet seat covers. Yes. Just now. Please hurry!

Nevermind that we’re getting frostbite on our typing fingers and I think one of the penguins that has taken up in the back cubicle has it out for me. No, no. Paper toilet seat covers. Priorities.

It might be important to note that there are probably 12-15 women on my floor, and we share a three-stall restroom. I’ve been in some skanky bathrooms, and I assure you that this one is fine. Seriously. Yet, the majority of the middle-aged women on this floor insist on the paper toilet seat cover and wash their hands like their prepping for brain surgery. And god forbid they’d have to touch the sink handle with their … actual … skin. Ladies. What in the name of all things holy do you expect to catch in this bathroom?!

Let me assure you that I’m a clean person. In fact, I even have a little Purell bottle on my keychain. Just in case. Ok, I get cleanliness! But my god this isn’t the kind of bathroom where a doctor is having sex with a dying patient in a bar! This is an office building. It’s an office building that’s cleaned regularly. And you push paper, not clots through someone’s arteries.

Heretofore, I’ve just laughed at the strange, collective, germ-a-phobia that engulfs my office. But please, ladies, let’s just not make the nice janitor lady cut her lunch short so you can place that thin piece of paper between your deriere and the porcelain, hm?

2 comments:

Boutros said...

Are they unable to use regular toilet paper for this task? Or do the covers have some sort of extra-sanitary property?

(I am amused by the ones in our own bathroom at the office. Their brand: PROTECTO. Like a superhero.)

Janet Kincaid said...

The funny thing is, a toilet seat is actually one of the cleanest surfaces in a bathroom because one of the cleanest and most covered surfaces of your body--your butt--is in contact with it. Two clean surfaces equal two clean surfaces. (See Mythbusters for proof.)

Still, some women have HORRIBLE toilet habits. I could write volumes about the women's room at my former workplace with the shoe prints on the toilet seats (this isn't backwater China or India, folks) or the fecal matter on the floor (GROSS!) or the copious amounts of water that pool around the sinks (bad design). And no, I didn't work in a gas station. This was a high-powered trade association on 19th between M and L!

Having said that, I'll still take the ladies room over the men's any day.